Thursday, March 19, 2015

St Patrick's Day

I fully expected to have a baby this week, so when I woke up on Tuesday not in labor, I had no plan. I put the kids in charge of the day. When faced with a choice of anything in the world to do, Jared asked to go to the Ballard Locks and fish ladder, stop at our favorite salmon wrap restaurant for lunch, and stop for ice cream. B wanted to go to the zoo, and Eloise wanted a ferry ride.

We started by walking through the locks to our cafe. The proprietor, Low (short for Lawrence), is the nicest guy in the world. When Jared had to go to the bathroom, Low walked Jared through the secret passage (complete with coded locks) to the bathroom shared by several store fronts. Maybe we are getting a little bit too comfortable here.

B's response to everything that frustrates him lately is biting Eloise, and this gets especially bad when he is tired or hungry. Jared doesn't get bit very often because he doesn't have any qualms about bowling B over if he tries to bite. 98% of everything B does is unbearably cute, but the other 2% is pretty nasty. I guess this is pretty normal for his age.

When we were done with lunch, we walked back through the botanical gardens, which were overrun with Canada Geese (which each poop over a pound a day, for your information), back to the locks.

The fish ladder was closed for maintenance, and it was a slow day for boats, but these kids are still cute, and they had a good time. Anyone want to see Eloise. . .

. . . a little closer?

The small lock was closed for cleaning and repairs. I had never seen it drained before. It was interesting to see scaffolding where there is usually 20 feet of water.

Since the locks are only a couple of miles from the zoo, we stopped at the zoo on our way home. What was the highlight? The climbing tree, of course. This is why we get a membership instead of just paying for the occasional overpriced ticket.

Little green St. Patrick's Day monkeys.

These kids were pretty tired, but made it through the zoo mostly happy. No one actually fell asleep until the drive home.

I wonder how many miles we walked before we got to this playground, and everyone still had the energy to play.

Last stop: penguins.

I didn't really want to go to an ice cream shop with a tired troupe of children and overwhelm them with flavor choices until they had a collective breakdown, so we just stopped for a Jack in the Box shake on the way home. Everyone was happy with four flavor choices.

We ran out of time for the ferry, since I had a relief society church activity in the evening, which Todd was signed up to babysit for, so everyone had to be ready to come along. It was a very full day.